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Vision in the eternal present

Nature volume 394, page 519 (1998)Cite this article

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When we are searching our visual environment, it might be expected that we accumulate records or memories of the locations that have been scanned. But a new study indicates that visual search can operate without the guidance of such memories.

The method used by Horowitz and Wolfe is simple and clever. In difficult visual-search tasks, such as that shown in Fig. 1, the time taken to find a target increases more or less linearly with the total number of items in the display. The speed of perceptual processing, in terms of average time per display item, is measured by the slope of the line that relates the search time to the number of items (the ‘search function’). Horowitz and Wolfe measured this slope under two conditions. In the ‘static’ presentation, all items remained in the same location — as is typical in search experiments. But in the ‘random’ presentation, the target and all of the other display items changed position roughly every 100 ms.

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Figure 1: Visual-search task.

References

  1. Sternberg, S. Acta Psychol. 30, 276-315 (1969).

  2. Horowitz, T. S. & Wolfe, J. M. Nature 394, 575-577 (1998).

  3. Andersen, R. A. Cerebral Cortex 5, 457-469 (1995).

  4. Brooks, R. A. Robotics Auton. Sys. 6, 3-15 (1990).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Perception, Attention and Motor Sciences, School of Psychology, University of Wales at Bangor, Bangor, LL57 2DG, Gwynedd, UK

    Robert Ward

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  1. Robert Ward
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Ward, R. Vision in the eternal present. Nature 394, 519 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28940

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